AllBreedNorth

Aboutus

We are a small family owned/operated dog training business one hour north from the Twin Cities. We offer in-home training and behavior consultations, group training classes, and board & train programs.

Specialties include pet behavior, service dogs, and protection sports (done outside of the business). We are balanced trainers who primarily use positive reinforcement (aka "treat training").

Philosophy

We believe dogs are family, and should be raised and cared for with love and boundaries.

Don't get us wrong, dogs are still dogs...

We know they have different ways of viewing the world and processing information than humans. Although we like to use child rearing analogies as an example for how we should keep our dogs, we are fully aware that they are not actually furry little children. That being said, every puppy we own is our "baby"!

The dog training industry has made some big changes in the last decade, and it has been exciting to move right along with the newest advances in behavior science. More and more research is being done about dogs, so we know more than we ever have about how dogs think and act.

Just like with anything else, you have to take information with a grain of salt... decide what is best for you and your situation. The industry trend is now going full-on "positive only". While we have adopted less aversive, more science-based methods over the years, we are unwilling to create an environment where there are no negative consequences for any of their actions. Life just does not work that way.

Case in point: "Millennials"... it's all over the news about how getting participation trophies in everything they did as a child, while never being told no (because it ruins their self-esteem [or something like that]) has made for a bunch of people incapable of accepting rejection or any other form of negative actions towards or around them.

We consider ourselves to be balanced trainers, because we use a mix of positive reinforcement (aka, treat-training), and appropriate corrections. We are fair in delivering feedback to the dog so that we have the best chance of increasing the desired behaviors, and decreasing undesired ones.